There In The End
by White Star 2
Summary: It was a good campaign, but it was doomed from the start.


Title: There In The End  
Author: White Star 2 (hila-p@barak-online.net)  
Spoilers: Uh... I haven't actually seen anything past Two Cathedrals.  
But I've heard very few early S3 spoilers and I wrote them in, so  
call it that.  
  
Disclaimer: Aaron owns them and it's probably best that way. I  
borrowed, I wrote, I'll give 'em back by tomorrow.  
  
Summary: It was a good campaign, but it was doomed from the start.  
  
Author's Notes: Many thanks go out on this one. Thanks to Rob for  
keeping me up late so I can have the three o'clock spark of  
inspiration. Thanks to Ayelet for having me over so I can write it on  
the train on the way back. Thanks to Luna for the beta. Thanks to  
Arkin for relentlessly annoying me until I actually got it posted.  
  
* * *  
  
There In The End  
  
  
It was a good campaign, but it was doomed from the start. Much like  
Roger Becker's movies and New Coke, she thought, the effort was  
wasted, because the core was rotten, the product. The candidate. And  
that's one problem even the best of advertisers, strategists, and PR  
people couldn't put a good face on.  
  
And so they lost. It wasn't her fault, she tried to tell herself,  
none of them were to blame. Maybe the President, in the end, but no  
one would say it to his face. After the year and a half they had been  
through, no one would have thought about laying any of the blame on  
him. And so she tried hard not to take it personally, and she failed  
miserably.  
  
She wasn't going to get to keep the job she'd grown to love and  
Democrats weren't going to get to keep the White House. It was a  
double loss for her, and it seemed like, at least in part, it was her  
fault.  
  
"CJ?" Josh knocked softly on her open office door. She looked up  
slowly, her hands still deep inside the deep bottom drawer of her  
desk, discovering treasures that had been lost for four years and  
long since forgotten. Life Savers, pennies, Post-Its with names and  
numbers she only partially recalled. Nothing of any value, so far.  
  
"Listen," Josh said with the same hint of desperation that had been  
in everyone's voices all month. The building was suffocated with it.  
"We're all going out for a beer in a bit. Sam and Toby and Donna and  
me. And maybe Ginger, too, if Sam manages to convince her by then."  
  
"I'll pass," she said. She hated it - the sudden increased sense of  
community between them, trying to gather up good memories as fast as  
possible before they all go their separate ways.  
  
"Are you sure?" Josh asked.  
  
"Yeah," she said heavily. "I think I'll stay here."  
  
"I'm going to miss this place," Josh thumped his fist against the  
doorjamb as he left. CJ looked around what was once her office but  
now was nothing but a disarray of half-packed cardboard boxes. It was  
night already, and it was snowing. The windows were fogged up just a  
little, failing to ward off the cold from without.  
  
This was one of the better days. Since the election, she'd had worse.  
She'd had days when she could barely stand coming to the office in  
the morning. But now it was hardly an office anymore, and in six days  
some Republican who thought he knew what the world really needed  
would occupy it, the new voice of the new administration.  
  
It wasn't as if her life was going to stop. She got job offers from  
all over the map, both political and straight-up PR. None of their  
lives were going to stop. Toby had accepted a job at Atlantic  
Intermedia. "Sold out," he said with a smile so tiny no one else  
would have noticed it. He was giving up on politics, leaving his  
losing streak behind him. Because, he said, if Josiah Bartlet lost,  
it was time to hang up his hat.  
  
Sam was off to write speeches for some Governor from the Midwest that  
might be running for president in three years. Josh was taking a job  
with the Senate Majority Leader, set out to do exactly what Ann Stark  
had failed to do - reduce the new president to Prime Minister. "I'm  
going to make him regret ever running," Josh said, almost managing to  
sound proud.  
  
Donna was going with Josh, Charlie was off to law school, Leo was  
moving back to Boston to consult. None of their lives were going to  
stop. But she wished the world would, for just a second, so she could  
catch her breath again.  
  
Her time in the White House was out, and in six days she would have  
to take her things and leave. No one talked about that part - about  
having to clear out. They just silently packed their boxes, ready to  
leave empty rooms for their predecessors.  
  
* * *  
  
"You know, I always figured we'd get another four years," Sam said,  
as Toby played with his pink rubber ball. "I always figured that it's  
meant to be, that he's a good president and they'll see that."  
  
Toby threw the ball against the wall, and Sam was slightly startled.  
It came back and Toby caught it, expressionless.  
  
"We should do the farewell address," Sam said, hoping it would get  
some kind of reaction out of Toby. It didn't. "It's five days from  
now."  
  
"It can wait another day," Toby said finally. Sam knew he was right.  
In the glumness of the building, everyone was tempted to  
procrastinate, even Toby. And Sam, willing as he might have been to  
just get it done with, knew it was hopeless to try.  
  
The whole building was foreign, suddenly, cold. Computers were  
packed, files were moved, desks were bare. And Sam saw how it was the  
little things that made a place home. Even Toby's office, which had  
never seemed very decorated or homely to him before suddenly seemed  
deserted, a shadow of what it had been.  
  
They were working half-days, as if time had stood still and the  
country wasn't there to be run anymore. It was someone else's concern  
now. The staff was wandering aimlessly through the halls, some, like  
Toby, like defeated giants, slumped and afraid to look up, others,  
like CJ, like ghosts ready to haunt the place and maybe scare all the  
Republicans out of it once they arrive.  
  
They were going out almost every night, the whole gang, this bar or  
another, once or twice a restaurant so that Leo could come along.  
They talked about good times they'd had in the White House,  
friendships they'd shared in the past, how shocked they were four  
years earlier to wake up and find that they were working for the  
President of the United States.  
  
But none of them talked about plans for the future. He knew almost  
everyone had them. But they were never discussed when they were there  
as a group. The feeling of friendship was just too fragile to be  
disturbed. One nudge in the wrong direction, and it would break. And  
then that bitter taste would be all they'd have.  
  
The closer their eviction deadline got, the more aware he was that he  
didn't really know what he wanted to do. He'd accepted an offer to  
write for Terry Windham in Ohio, but that was nothing more than a  
first instinct of self preservation. He agreed to write - that was  
what he did now, write speeches, great speeches, even.  
  
But he didn't want to be doing that forever. He wanted out of  
politics at some point. But he couldn't damn well go back to Gage-  
Whitney, or any other firm in New York. He could move back to  
California, to try to forget why he ran away from it in the first  
place. Maybe Chicago. Or, like Josh had said with a smile that wasn't  
cheerful but was a lot better than most he'd seen around since the  
election, he could stay and accept his fate as a whore for the  
Democratic Party.  
  
It was an appealing thought some days. Maybe he'd even get to see the  
inside of the White House again. But, starting five days from now,  
they would be the opposition, the other guys. He wasn't used to that.  
  
At least they got the Senate and the House, he thought. For the first  
time in twelve years, the Democrats had some legislative power. "And  
that," the President had said, "Is final proof that it's not  
Democrats that the people have a problem with, it's me. The American  
people are punishing me."  
  
If he wasn't the President, if he wasn't smarter than all of them put  
together, if he wasn't twenty years their senior, if he wasn't in so  
much pain at that moment they couldn't bear it, one of them might  
have said something tactless like, "You deserved it." But he was all  
those things, and they knew better.  
  
And so suddenly the West Wing developed a new set of unwritten rules  
for what you can and can't discuss. No talk of the future or of MS.  
No talk of why and how they lost. And suddenly he imagined Ann Stark  
in Leo's office and it made him sick to his stomach.  
  
"We should start on it tomorrow," he told Toby.  
  
"Yeah," Toby said and threw his ball against the wall again. This  
time he was just a little less expressionless.  
  
* * *  
  
As fast as Margaret was packing things from his office, Leo was  
taking them back out. He needed to work. He loved this job and he  
knew he only had four more days to do it. Not even four, he thought.  
Three. In four days, Robert Ritchie would be sworn in, and his office  
would be occupied by someone he'd probably loathe if he had the  
chance to meet.  
  
No one else had their head in the game anymore, they were too busy  
packing and remembering old times and planning ahead. He was that  
young once, he thought. They'd move on, do other great things.  
  
He didn't worry about them. He worried about the man in the office  
next door, the one with a wife, three kids, and MS. The man who just  
lost a Presidential election under the most horrible of terms and  
would probably never be remembered for any of the good he managed to  
do while he was in office.  
  
On any given day, there's no knowing what he'll choose to care about,  
he told CJ once. More than ever, it showed now. There were days when  
he dragged himself into the office late and grumpy, swearing he'd  
take out his rage on anyone who dared mention a Republican. Other  
days, he'd wake up with more energy than Leo had seen him with in  
years.  
  
Leo put away a memo from the Assistant Secretary of Transportation  
and put his hand on the knob of the door that connected to the Oval  
Office. He hesitated. Today was one of the worse days. When he  
finally opened the door, the sight pinched his heart. Unlike the rest  
of the building, which was being slowly packed into boxes, dissolving  
into nothingness, the Oval Office didn't change.  
  
The President noticed him standing there, half inside, and said,  
"Leo, come on in." It startled him out of the thought and he stepped  
in and closed the door behind him. The President was sitting on the  
couch, the jacket of his suit draped on the chair next to it. He put  
down the book he was reading. "This should be wonderful," he said in  
a tone somewhere between lost and ironic. "For the first time in a  
long time, I can sit down, I can read a book. No one expects anything  
from me." Anger started seeping into his voice, though his face never  
showed it. "Let me tell you, there's a certain advantage to being a  
lame duck."  
  
"Yes, sir," he was careful not to smile. If he knew anything about  
Jed Bartlet, it was that right now he didn't want to joke around, he  
was doing it out of habit. He didn't want to be left alone, either.  
  
The President seemed to be the only one in the building with nothing  
to do. Toby and Sam were working on the farewell speech, Josh and CJ  
were overseeing the packing efforts. And only the man with the  
hardest job in the building, had nothing to do but sit in his office  
and read a book.  
  
"Why don't you go up to the Residence?" Leo suggested, knowing it  
probably wasn't the best of ideas, either. Like the rest of the  
building, any part of the Residence that was customizable was being  
placed into boxes and trunks and shipped to various locations.  
  
"Nah," he replied. "Abbey's up there scaring the stewards. I don't  
really want any part in that."  
  
"Probably not."  
  
"Hey, Leo," the President said after a moment of silence that wasn't  
really awkward, just intolerable. "I'm supposed to do this farewell  
address, right?"  
  
"Toby and Sam are working on it."  
  
"And then go out to the lawn and shake hands with Ritchie?" Leo  
nodded. The President sighed. "I don't want to." And suddenly he was  
the eighteen-year-old boy he'd only just met, wanting to stand up to  
his father and knowing nothing would come of it.  
  
"Jed," Leo started and trailed off. He had nothing to say that was  
worth saying.  
  
"We got beat," he said, simply, quietly.  
  
"We got beat," Leo repeated.  
  
* * *  
  
Republicans were idiots.  
  
They were idiots and their constituents were idiots. And Josh had  
long since given up on trying to make them see that, and so his only  
other option was to make them pay. And if that meant going back to  
work for people he'd had to insult and take out for a ride all  
through the Bartlet administration, then so be it.  
  
It was weird to suddenly think of a Republican White House. It was  
not the right order of things.  
  
Republicans were idiots, and it was starting to get to him.  
  
Twice in the past two elections a president was elected whose party  
was in the minority. The first time it was the fault of the Electoral  
College. The second, it was the fault of the American people.  
  
But Bartlet acted like it didn't really matter that much, most days.  
Josh knew him well enough by now to know that wasn't true, but he was  
a private man, and Josh respected that.  
  
As for himself, he was as devastated as anyone else in the building,  
but what killed him was that he wasn't sure why. He'd been the one  
that looked at the polling numbers first, he'd had late-night  
conversations with Joey Lucas about the likelihood that they'd  
change. He'd been preparing for defeat just a little longer than  
everyone.  
  
He'd known it was coming, and so by the time it had finally come,  
what really bothered him was knowing he was going to lose all of his  
friends. Sam was picking up for Ohio, Leo for Boston, the President  
was going to retire to New Hampshire, CJ had just accepted a job for  
some feminist lobby in San Francisco whose name he couldn't recall.  
Even Toby was running away - leaving politics for good.  
  
Only Donna was staying, coming with him in hopes Wiley would make a  
good enough Senate Majority Leader to put him in the White House in  
four years. "Even if just as vice president to your guy." Sam had  
smiled back, nearly mirroring his smirk, and said, "We'll see."  
  
And the days dragged on and on, and the body count in the White House  
slowly dropped. First it was the interns who went on Christmas break  
and never came back. After them, it was the congressional liaisons.  
Then the associate counsels, and finally, these past few days, even  
the assistants had slowly started dropping out.  
  
Ginger took a job with some law firm in Baltimore. Bonnie was off to  
the other coast with some boyfriend he never knew she had. Margaret  
was still around, packing all of Leo's things - and her own - for the  
move to Boston. Charlie had already left, in time to make it to the  
start of Spring Semester at Yale Law. The President, for just that  
one last week, was left in the capable hands of Nancy. She left  
today. For two days, he would be alone.  
  
They were all alone.  
  
And in three days, they would all go their separate ways. He wondered  
how often they would look back, how hard it would be. He wondered if  
they would stay friends, any of them. His friendship with Sam had  
survived through thick and thin, though politics and distances and  
call girls. He like to think it would survive now, too. But he had no  
idea if it really would. He had no idea about any of them, and that  
devastated him more than anything.  
  
"Josh," Donna said, grabbing his arm as he walked, almost  
sleepwalking, past the empty desk that used to be hers. He told her  
she didn't really need to come in anymore. She should worry more  
about their things being moved to their new office on the Hill.  
  
"Donna." He smiled. It's all he had the strength left for, anymore.  
"You didn't have to come in today."  
  
"I know," she said, more apologetic than he'd seen her, well, ever.  
Something was up. "Listen..."  
  
He motioned with a jerk of his head and they stepped into his office.  
"What?" he asked.  
  
"I talked to my parents yesterday. We talked for a very long time,  
about the election, about everything. And we decided that it's best  
if I go home for a while." And there it was.  
  
"Donna..."  
  
"I know I said I'd start at the new place with you, but I need some  
time off, Josh. I really need this. I wouldn't do it otherwise."  
  
"I know."  
  
She wrapped her arms around him tightly. "Thank you for  
understanding." He smiled, a little more wearily than last time.  
  
They were all alone.  
  
* * *  
  
Masochists had always seemed stupid to him. He never understood what  
kind of person could possibly experience pain and then come back for  
more. And suddenly, he was one. This job had turned him into one.  
  
He ran his bicycle into a tree, back in his first year. He came back  
to work. He got his weaknesses published in the Post and the Times,  
and he came back to work. He got shot, and he came back. He told the  
world he had MS, and he came back.  
  
But none of it ever prepared him for the biggest pain of all, losing  
the election. In his entire life, he'd never lost an election until  
this one, and even that, right now, seemed like too much. It was the  
knockout, the killing blow, the one that would not be followed by any  
more pain, the one after which he did not need to go back for more,  
after which there was no way to come back.  
  
Nothing in his life ever prepared him for how it felt. More than  
anything, it felt lonely.  
  
Sure, Abbey was there for him, but she was never really on his side  
on this one. She was almost relieved when they lost, he knew she  
wished for it, even if it was only unconsciously. He was forced to  
live up to his promise that way, one term.  
  
The staff were all handling defeat their own way. It was true, he  
felt close to them, he thought of them as his own children. But that  
kind of closeness, and with this job, only went so far. And so, now,  
they all seemed distant.  
  
Leo was the only one that seemed to notice. He surfaced from his  
papers and phone calls every few hours to check up on him. Again and  
again he'd come in, asking him how he's doing, afraid too much time  
alone in the Oval Office with nothing to do might drive him mad. He  
might have been right.  
  
"Mr. President?" Leo appeared through the door again, quiet as a  
prowler. He waited to be waved in before he entered, closing the door  
behind him. And suddenly the thought surfaced - tomorrow he wouldn't  
be Mr. President anymore.  
  
Tomorrow he'd just be Jed.  
  
"You know, it never changes," Leo said and he raised a questioning  
eyebrow. "The Oval Office, from administration to administration. The  
whole building changes, but this room stays exactly the same."  
  
"I guess there's some measure of comfort in that," he said and Leo  
nodded in agreement. "Or futility," he added and saw Leo search for a  
response.  
  
"I just got off the phone with Charlie," he said.  
  
"Are you checking up on him?" Leo chuckled.  
  
"Well, someone ought to," he said. "At least he's doing well."  
  
"He likes Yale?"  
  
"He hates it."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because it's three states away from Georgetown."  
  
"He misses Zoey?"  
  
"Wouldn't you?"  
  
Leo smiled.  
  
"This was my last job, you know," he said suddenly, surprised at his  
own moment of darkness. The months since the election had been  
flooded with them, but they caught him by surprise every time. "This  
is it."  
  
"Well, it was a good one, Mr. President," Leo said with that rare  
smile of nostalgia and joy that he hadn't seen on him for months,  
maybe years. "It was a good one."  
  
"It was," he replied, "But it's gone."  
  
"No," Leo said. "Not until tomorrow."  
  
* * *  
  
Toby moved slowly through the crowds on Pennsylvania Avenue. The  
motorcade was coming through, and they were cheering senselessly.  
Once in a while there was a strange look from someone who recognized  
him, but they were all too happy to care. They'd put a man in the  
White House. They drove the evil Democrats out.  
  
These people, covered in scarves and coats and earmuffs, out cheering  
for their new President in the freezing January cold, reminded him  
too much of all those people who'd come out to see them four years  
before. They looked almost the same. Somehow, he found that morbid.  
  
It had been a frustrating campaign. He was trying to run an  
intellectual from New England who'd been scandalized and branded a  
liar. And if that wasn't hard enough, their opponent had campaigned  
himself as "an honest man of the people". He suddenly wondered if he  
was going to pull a Jimmy Carter and hop out of the car.  
  
No, probably not. It was too cold, and Bob Ritchie was probably too  
stupid to see the value of the gesture to the people the way Carter  
had when he'd done it.  
  
The first campaign, back when getting Jed Bartlet elected president  
was improbable and only seemed impossible, was an intellectual  
exercise. This campaign was impossible repressed and denied to the  
point where it only seemed improbable. It was devastating, and more  
than any of his other failed campaigns, because this time he knew  
what it was like to win.  
  
He felt almost like a small child, running away at his first failure.  
But it wasn't his first. At minimum, it was his thirty-first, and  
he'd had it. He was good, that was true, but there was only so much  
disappointment he could take.  
  
The crowd cheered Ritchie all the way from the car to the podium on  
the steps of Capitol Hill and Toby clenched his jaw. It stung, more  
than anything else. For that one minute, Ritchie's slow walk up the  
stairs, all of his tragedies, his humiliating moments, seemed  
inconsequential, miniscule. He wanted to scream.  
  
Twice in two elections, the White House was occupied by the minority.  
Somehow he felt like both were his fault. The first time, he managed  
to get Bartlet elected. With only 48 percent of the votes, true, but  
he put his man in the White House. The second time... some days he  
wondered if he hadn't started sniffing around Hoynes and the oil  
industry, if he hadn't gone to Leo, would any of it have happened.  
  
Would it have been wrong? Yes. Would he have felt better about it?  
Yes. And right now, listening to them cheer for a man he felt wasn't  
worthy of holding any public office, much less the presidency, he  
thought he might have been able to live with it.  
  
He was tired of it. He knew it, but he never knew how much until  
Bartlet asked him to write the note he was supposed to leave on his  
desk for Ritchie. "I don't want to do it," he'd explained  
apologetically, "But I already told CJ I would and she told the  
press."  
  
And so he sat down at his computer and wrote words of encouragement  
he didn't mean and a few praises he had up his sleeves for the people  
he really had nothing to say about. And he realized exactly how tired  
of politics he had gotten.  
  
He started thinking of things they'd planned for their second term.  
There was so much they still wanted to do. "You have goals," CJ had  
told him when he announced he was quitting. "And even though you  
wouldn't like the rest of them to know, you have ideals, too. This is  
what we do. This is how you make them happen."  
  
And it occurred to him that tomorrow morning he wouldn't be going to  
the office, he wouldn't be listening to her brief, he wouldn't be  
annoyed by Josh and Sam. And he didn't know how long until he'd see  
any of them again. Phone calls on special occasions, Christmas cards,  
birthday e-mails. Maybe dinner or drinks if they were in each other's  
new home. They were all going to go off and be rich or famous, and  
the group was a shattered glass, its pieces strewn all over.  
  
And then, as if only to kick him when he was already down, the  
speakers rang out with the words he least wanted to hear. "I, Robert  
Ritchie, do solemnly swear," the knot in Toby's stomach tightened.  
Everything around him seemed surreal for just one second, then hard  
reality struck him again, and it hurt. "That I will faithfully  
execute the office of President of the United States," he continued  
in a southern drawl, inconsiderate or unaware of how sharply each  
word twisted the knife in Toby's gut.  
  
He didn't expect it to feel this bad. He didn't remember what it was  
like, maybe. Or maybe it was suddenly different. Perspective was  
everything, truth was nothing. It had been his job to prove that  
right. But perspective had changed, and the truth, inconsequential as  
it should have been, was not on his side anymore.  
  
And so he did the thing that defined his political career as a whole,  
the thing he was best at. He turned around and walked away. 


End file.
